"The world changed this winter with the fight over SOPA and PIPA, and everybody is evaluating what that means," his introduction to the guest began. "To some degree it is a cliche; it is a little bit like Daniel entering the lion's den... I also think we owe him the same civility that we would respond to any controversial speaker no matter how controversial their views, so I'm expecting you all to treat him with respect."

With that, the CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America took the podium and, to no one's surprise, inveighed against copyright infringement and piracy. No sparks flew. The audience treated Sherman in a cordial and friendly manner. They even laughed at his jokes, which is probably why his presentation didn't get much immediate news play.

One factoid from the speech, however, has taken on a life of its own. Sherman offered it alongside a chart about 14 minutes into the speech.

"The fact that I think is very interesting, but I think that most people don't know, is that there are fewer people trying to make money as musicians today," he explained.

"According to BLS [Bureau of Labor Statistics] data from the Federal government, the number of people who self describe themselves as musicians has declined since 1999 by 41 percent. Obviously piracy is not just a problem for our economy, but for our culture too."

A difficult reality to stomach

I didn't hear about this revelation at Sherman's talk. Like lots of other tech industry observers, I first learned about it on a Twitter log, mine coming from indie radio station @WFMU in New Jersey: "US Bureau of Labor Statistics:" the @WFMU tweet solemnly declared, "There Are 41% Fewer Paid Musicians Today Than in 1999."

The missive's hyperlink pointed to a post at Digital Music News, founded by former Epic Records marketer Paul Resnikoff.

"There's more music being created than ever before, but paradoxically, musicians are making less," Resnikoff's commentary explained. "Which means there are also fewer musicians and music professionals enjoying gainful employment, thanks to a deflated ecosystem once primed by major labels and marked-up CDs."

"It's a difficult reality to stomach, especially given years of misguided assumptions about digital platforms. But it's not really a revolution if it's not getting people paid. And according to stats supplied by the US Department of Labor, there are 41 percent fewer paid musicians since 1999."

Below this sad declaration came the following chart, which shows a long drop in paid musicians and in recorded music shipment sales, followed by a link to Sherman's presentation.

Disturbed by this revelation, I followed the trail of comments stemming from Resnikoff's missive, which quarreled over the ethics of illegal file sharing and the efficacy of various business models. But what struck me was that none of these debaters double checked the arithmetic construed from the table. After all, if you think about it, this is an astounding claim to make: that the United States has lost something approaching half of its paid musicians since 1999.

So I checked the figures myself, using the basic percentage change formula that I was taught in high school (which, admittedly, was a long time ago): (P2 - P1) / P1 x 100 = percentage change.

If you look at the Digital Music News version of the chart, it looks like the orange bar over 1999 comes to about 49,000 "musicians & artists." Let's call that our P1. The orange bar over 2011 comes to around 34,000 or so. That's our P2.

In other words: a 30.6 percent decline. To be fair, a 30 percent drop isn't 41 percent, but it is still a big fall. Given the discrepancy, however, I began wondering about the numbers themselves. So I went to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' web site myself. The first and most obvious numbers I found were the Occupation Employment Statistics National Cross Industry figures for "musicians and singers" in 2011 (zip / excel): 42,530, and the OES figures for 1999 (zip / excel): 46,440.

And I ran that formula again.

42,530 (P2) - 46,440 (P1) / 46,440 (P1) x 100 = 8.4 percent decline.

8.4 percent, I'm sure most readers will agree, is a long way from 41 percent.

Working over time

At this point I realized that it was time for me to contact the RIAA itself, and ask them to explain where they got their figures and how they did their math. In response, RIAA executive Jonathan Lamy pointed me to this chart, published on the trade association's blog pages in 2010.

This table (above) is somewhat different from the Digital Music News display. Aside from the fact that it doesn't mention 2011 (having been produced a year earlier), it reverses the graphics indicators for "musicians and artists" (they're now declining in linear rather than orange bar fashion). But by my simple percentage change formula, the descent is fairly mild. If there were 45,000 "musicians and artists" in 1999 and about 39,000 in 2009, the drop comes to about 13.33 percent.

So I wrote to RIAA yet again. How did you produce 41 percent, and where did you get your data figures? (After all, I was looking at "musicians and singers" and they said they were tracking "musicians and artists.").

"As far as the 41%, from that data set," came Friedlander's reply, "if you look at any of a variety of months between late 1999 and 2011 and 2012 (such as July '99 vs Aug '11) you can see declines around the 41% level (different months yield different figures, but some are even higher than 41%)."

"Although I don't know if anyone outside the agency can call themselves experts on Bureau labor data," Friedlander explained, "my understanding is that the occupational statistics you link to below are simply a different way of looking at the same underlying data that I used characterized by the industry NAICS codes. I think the NAICS codes provide better aggregation across fields, while the OES charts break out the data in a way that is more difficult to work with over time."

Indeed, the BLS advises statisticians that the OES figures I used should be taken with a grain of salt, in large part because job classifications keep changing as industries change.

For example: "Workers in newly classified occupations, such as systems software engineers and applications software engineers, may have been reported as computer programmers in the past," BLS warns. "Therefore, even occupations that appear the same in the two systems may show employment shifts due to the addition or deletion of related occupations."

But in 2002, the BLS transitioned to the very NAICS classification system that RIAA says that it used. So I plugged in the national estimates for "musicians and singers" for that year up to 2011, a pretty solid chunk of time. 53,940 for 2002; 42,530 for 2011. That gave me a 21 percent decline.

Not either/or

I decided to show RIAA some of my numbers and press for more details on theirs' one more time.

"You are looking at YEAR vs. YEAR," came the reply. "Please read Josh's note closely: we looked at MONTHLY data: one month in a year vs. another month a year. Comparison between July '99 vs. August 2011. What you find AND what we said can BOTH be right. It's not either/or. It depends on what date you compare."

The problem with this response was that Sherman's categorical statement that we've seen a 41 percent drop in the number of musicians and artists since 1999 wasn't based on a monthly chart. It was based on the yearly table that he showed the Personal Democracy conference.

It's hard to make out the figures on this screenshot from Cary Sherman's presentation at the Personal Democracy conference. But the chart clearly tracks job decline in years, rather than months.

But the second part of RIAA's response is spot on. Both the RIAA and I could be right. More likely: we could both be wrong. It would be irresponsible for me to conclude that, based on my earlier mentioned OES figures and personal calculations, the US has seen a decline in musicians and singers of "only" 8.4 percent. Equally dubious is the assertion that the drop came to 41 percent, "according to BLS data"—not to mention the corollary assertion that the fall, whatever the percentage, can be clearly linked to illegal downloads.

In the end, there is just too much conflicting information to produce a single, simple sound bite or tweet quality number. That's why the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts all its occupation related tables on its archives page—so that social scientists will see the variant ways in which jobs and professions have been tracked over the last decade.

> 17,000 musicians needed

It is worth ending this cautionary tale with a review of the BLS's own occupational handbook projection for musician/singer employment in the near future. Note that the handbook cites a much higher employment figure for both trades in 2010 than mentioned in the above tables: about 176,200 musicians and singers. That's because it comes from the Bureau's National Employment Matrix, I was told, which adds additional data sources.

Employment for musicians and singers is expected to grow by ten percent over the decade—"about as fast as the average for all occupations," the government notes:

The number of people attending musical performances, such as orchestra, opera, and rock concerts, is expected to increase from 2010 to 2020. As a result, more musicians and singers will be needed to play at these performances.

There will be additional demand for musicians to serve as session musicians and backup artists for recordings and to go on tour. Singers will be needed to sing backup and to make recordings for commercials, films, and television.

It's not all good news. "Growth will likely be limited as orchestras, opera companies, and other musical groups have difficulty getting funding," the agency warns. And although some musicians will work for non-profits or seek corporate sponsorships, "during economic downturns, these organizations may have trouble finding enough funding to cover their expenses."

A very mixed bag, but the summary does not mention the impact of illegal downloading anywhere. "Musicians and singers with exceptional musical talent should have the best opportunities," the assessment concludes.

Promoted Comments

Mr. Lasar, your questioning of this data is appreciated to illustrate the truth of the matter; however, I can say as an active professional musician since the 80s, I've witnessed step by step, the severe attrition of professional musician opportunities and numbers. The truth is this started happening in earnest during the DJ-disco days of the late 70s, where live bands started to be replaced by DJs, and went into hyperdrive with the DJ culture taking over more and more up to the present day. Couple that with internet piracy and the subsequent collapse of much of the music industry, and you have very very few working musicians today per capita, compared to any time in the past half century, at least. We're talking much more than 41% here over the past 25 years.

Classic cheating with charts. X axis at 20K, not 0. Well-known way to cheat to exaggerate a molehill into a mountain, if so desired.

Given the state of the economy, unemployment, loss of disposable income, who should be surprised that there was some downside to musicians this last decade. I'll bet artists didn't fare any better. Got nothing to do with the RIAA's pet peeves.

In the older days we had those big name bands that stood for a long time such as Queen, Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The Doors and so on. These wasn't those manufactured formulaic pop bands out of a assembly line such as X-Factor or Pop Idol or whatever flavour of the month they're coming out in.

Those bands lasted.

Today we have formulaic pop music cranked out by those "reality shows" and how long do those singers etc last? Not very long before they fade away and is replaced. As they fade away = "job loss"

Furthermore with music - this is highly debatable - ie is sales of music falling not because of illegal downloads but because it's more crappy and thus less people are buying it. After all - why does old music from the old big names such as Queen and so on continue to sell well to today even though the band is no longer around. Is anyone buying the album for a band/singer that won Pop Idol or whatever it was in 2002? Doubt it. Maybe some will, but it won't be making the sales that the old "classics" are making.

Cultural tastes is another factor....we've got a much wider range of music catering to all tastes - ie it's not just rock'n'roll anymore...there's rap, techno, disco, r'n'b, heavy metal and so on - ie some folks will love rap songs but can't stand pop, or rock and so on.

Basically I'm just trying to say that "music sales are falling" isn't down to a single source. Is MP3 downloads one factor - sure, but it's just that...a single factor among many others such as the wider diversity = higher music output, but from a wider source, including those outside RIAA's merits such as indies and so on into a more fussy market.

It's not all good news. "Growth will likely be limited as orchestras, opera companies, and other musical groups have difficulty getting funding," the agency warns. And although some musicians will work for non-profits or seek corporate sponsorships, "during economic downturns, these organizations may have trouble finding enough funding to cover their expenses."

That's from the end of the article, but I think it is extremely relevant. Saying the number of musicians is declining by itself really shouldn't be cause for alarm. You have to figure out what that actually means- what is contributing to that decline- before you can draw meaningful conclusions.

It's obvious to even the musically illiterate that classical orchestras and operas are on the decline in the US. That, presumably, contributes somewhat significantly to the decline in overall musicians. That being the case, it isn't too hard to assume that the rest of the decline is due to non-piracy-related issues, such as shifting musical tastes to non-declared musicians (like your neighborhood indie band).

Everybody here already knows to take RIAA figures with a grain of salt though... if not outright disbelief.

Another aspect that's not really touched on is what percentage of this drop comes from classical musicians. Orchestras around the country are shutting down, and many symphony musicians are facing bankruptcy. Interestingly, this cannot even remotely be blamed on piracy.

The competition for live music has always been recorded music, and there's basically no way to pirate the experience of a live concert (bootlegging doesn't count -- that's still recorded music). The reason orchestras are dying has to do partly with a lack of interest among the younger generations (symphony boards have historically sucked at attracting the kids who are currently in their 40's, but that's a topic for another day), but primarily with the fact that the economy sucks, and concerts are a luxury.

And no, music lessons are not a viable substitute economy, unless you're willing to pay your kids' teacher upwards of $100 per lesson.

Smoke-and-mirror verbiage aside (from the RIAA's responses to Lasar), I think I've figured out what they were arguing: I'm guessing that the RIAA built their "yearly" chart off cherry-picked numbers from whatever month within each year represented would yield the most sympathetic results they were desiring (so, highest rated month in the starting year would be presented as the "yearly" value there, and lowest rated month in 2012 for that value; thus, providing the biggest spread possible over years covered). So, if that is the case, then technically the two percentages would not be mutually exclusive. However, if that is the case, then that is beyond leading data and going straight into fabrication of "facts" for propaganda purposes (which, I guess, all propaganda is just fabricated "facts").

1241 posts | registered Jun 5, 2006

Matthew Lasar
Matt writes for Ars Technica about media/technology history, intellectual property, the FCC, or the Internet in general. He teaches United States history and politics at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Emailmatthew.lasar@arstechnica.com//Twitter@matthewlasar

132 Reader Comments

As much as it would probably bug the average person to have me asking the question, it still needs to be asked from the economics standpoint:

Is it necessarily a bad thing that we've lost 41% of paid musicians, assuming we take the RIAA's disingenuous methodology at face value? We should be looking at the demand for and the value of the product, not the raw numbers. Not every employment sector needs to be monotonically increasing in its ranks - competition in entertainment choices may dictate a reduction in professional musicians.

As much as it would probably bug the average person to have me asking the question, it still needs to be asked from the economics standpoint:

Is it necessarily a bad thing that we've lost 41% of paid musicians, assuming we take the RIAA's disingenuous methodology at face value? We should be looking at the demand for and the value of the product, not the raw numbers. Not every employment sector needs to be monotonically increasing in its ranks - competition in entertainment choices may dictate a reduction in professional musicians.

This is what I was thinking - 8% or 41%, still sounds (har har) like there are fewer musicians out there for the money. If we could only find a way to apply this to medicine or law...

Classic cheating with charts. X axis at 20K, not 0. Well-known way to cheat to exaggerate a molehill into a mountain, if so desired.

Given the state of the economy, unemployment, loss of disposable income, who should be surprised that there was some downside to musicians this last decade. I'll bet artists didn't fare any better. Got nothing to do with the RIAA's pet peeves.

In the older days we had those big name bands that stood for a long time such as Queen, Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The Doors and so on. These wasn't those manufactured formulaic pop bands out of a assembly line such as X-Factor or Pop Idol or whatever flavour of the month they're coming out in.

Those bands lasted.

Today we have formulaic pop music cranked out by those "reality shows" and how long do those singers etc last? Not very long before they fade away and is replaced. As they fade away = "job loss"

Furthermore with music - this is highly debatable - ie is sales of music falling not because of illegal downloads but because it's more crappy and thus less people are buying it. After all - why does old music from the old big names such as Queen and so on continue to sell well to today even though the band is no longer around. Is anyone buying the album for a band/singer that won Pop Idol or whatever it was in 2002? Doubt it. Maybe some will, but it won't be making the sales that the old "classics" are making.

Cultural tastes is another factor....we've got a much wider range of music catering to all tastes - ie it's not just rock'n'roll anymore...there's rap, techno, disco, r'n'b, heavy metal and so on - ie some folks will love rap songs but can't stand pop, or rock and so on.

Basically I'm just trying to say that "music sales are falling" isn't down to a single source. Is MP3 downloads one factor - sure, but it's just that...a single factor among many others such as the wider diversity = higher music output, but from a wider source, including those outside RIAA's merits such as indies and so on into a more fussy market.

It seems to me that the only musicians that become successful (paid) are those that follow the RIAA's 'formula'. Lots of T&A. Similar beats and rhythms. Instrument setups within a set of configurations. And so on. Has anyone else noticed how much of today's music sounds like everyone else's?

And look at the sources cited; US Dept of Labor and the RIAA. I am pretty sure that there are musicians in other countries, and others who are not members of the RIAA.

It's not all good news. "Growth will likely be limited as orchestras, opera companies, and other musical groups have difficulty getting funding," the agency warns. And although some musicians will work for non-profits or seek corporate sponsorships, "during economic downturns, these organizations may have trouble finding enough funding to cover their expenses."

That's from the end of the article, but I think it is extremely relevant. Saying the number of musicians is declining by itself really shouldn't be cause for alarm. You have to figure out what that actually means- what is contributing to that decline- before you can draw meaningful conclusions.

It's obvious to even the musically illiterate that classical orchestras and operas are on the decline in the US. That, presumably, contributes somewhat significantly to the decline in overall musicians. That being the case, it isn't too hard to assume that the rest of the decline is due to non-piracy-related issues, such as shifting musical tastes to non-declared musicians (like your neighborhood indie band).

Everybody here already knows to take RIAA figures with a grain of salt though... if not outright disbelief.

I wonder which math is more accurate: RIAA math or Cop Math (our raid netted 3 grams of pot with street value $675,000). Regardless, nice to see the author take the time to drill down to the source of the #s and give the RIAA a chance to explain its side. That's proper journalism.

I love music, I really do. I'm an amateur musician and spend a lot of time listening to music.

However, is it any surprise that in an economic downturn the people contributing the least to the economy are going to have the harder time? I mean, music is great, but few businesses need musicians to survive, everybody needs janitors and service staff...

I'm confused. Why does the recording industry need to supply data from third parties? Why not just go: here are the changes to the numbers of our staff over the years?

Because that would neglect the most important section of the music industry - freelancers who are distributing their music themselves. Thanks to the Internet, musicians have no need for the services the RIAAs clients provide. Anyone, including you or me, can distribute music. It's a worthless service now. Of course the RIAAs clients will see big drops in their staff, and hopefully those drops will accelerate exponentially. The amount of business necessary to keep large corporate entities alive is radically higher than the amount of business necessary to keep individual musicians more than wealthy. Distributors skim off more than 90% of every music sale, and they provide a service which goes become worthlessness into actual destruction of value. If you distribute your music with an RIAA-held record company, you have to deal with all of the restrictions old distribution channels created. You can't just release your music when it's done, you have to schedule its release with the record companies planned business. You can't release it worldwide, you have to deal with their distribution agreements. You can't ask any price you feel fair, and dozens of other significant handicaps. The non-distribution services that record companies offer (promotion, marketing, etc) can all be had from other companies for a flat rate - not a royalty. Short of massively shrinking their business and completely changing how they do things, the record companies will die because they no longer provide anything of value that isn't beaten by others, and the price they ask is absurd.

Popular music has also become much more single-artist centric and accessible with the rise of electronic music. In the late 90's, popular music was bands. Alt-rock, nu metal, rap groups, boy/girl bands. Now you have singer/songwriters, DJ's and solo artists topping the charts. Even when there is a band, it seems the number of musicians in the band is declining.

In country music, there's a bigger and bigger trend toward singers with no backing group when live; they hire set performers to record their songs and play solo, or with 2 other people even when the recording has a dozen instruments.

World music has gotten quite popular as well. I don't think the RIAA would be counting Asian and Latin music in their numbers.

Couple that with the fact that many artists are divorcing themselves from the RIAA and this doesn't really seem like much of a surprise.

Todays music is completely different than the music most of us have grown up on. We grew up with real bands and real musicians, today all we get is label created music with studio musicians playing as a backup band to some make believe singer found on scripted TV shows or someone singing someone elses songs on Youtube. This all started in the mid 80's with the boy bands, none of which played an instrument or wrote their own music, and the concept that the singer is the band. Real musicians don't want to get screwed by the music studios anymore and have gone independent, so they can actually write and own their own music.

The studios own greed is the cause of this, going all the way back to the beginning, even the bands we grew up with lost control of the music they created and recorded through one sided contracts. They got paid a lump sum to create a product that wasn't owned by them, it became property of the studios to do with whatever they want, and have continued getting the copyrights extended into infinity so they an continue milking massive profits out of repackaging and selling you the same thing over and over, while the actual creators of said product would get pennies on the dollar residual payments, so they created their own revenue stream through their performances/concerts. Even today you see the music industry trying to weasel cash out of artists performance rights as another revenue source for the industry through more one sided contracts.

Copyrights, patents, and trademarks are more creations of the wealthy to gain control of everything, you see all those things bought and sold and slowly getting bought up by smaller and smaller groups or mergers increasing their ownerships of these government granted assets, fewer people hold larger slices of these creations of others. Your work for a company and create something, your company already owns your creation, you signed it away in your employment agreement, they get rich of of our creations, while the actual creator gets a pat on the back and told to get back to work. The normal person can't afford the legal costs of patenting or trademarking or copyrighting their own creations, but there is always someone out there to offer you pennies on the dollar for a quick buyout of what you create, or they will just go behind your back and patent or copyright it behind your back if you won't sell out to them. The system is designed to screw the inventor/creator, not protect them, all so others can maintain control and get even richer.

In the older days we had those big name bands that stood for a long time such as Queen, Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The Doors and so on. These wasn't those manufactured formulaic pop bands out of a assembly line such as X-Factor or Pop Idol or whatever flavour of the month they're coming out in.

Those bands lasted.

Today we have formulaic pop music cranked out by those "reality shows" and how long do those singers etc last? Not very long before they fade away and is replaced. As they fade away = "job loss"

Just looking at the chart the downward trend also seems to follow the recent economic woes in the US. It doesn't seem unreasonable to think that those who considered themselves primarily to be musicians before the recession (and who financed their art through working part time or odd jobs) have now taken full time employment in other fields that they are now less likely to leave or have less time to spend away from due to uncertain economic conditions, and because of that may no longer consider themselves to be musicians primarily.

As discussed, it's really hard to measure what constitutes a paid musician, but as others are saying even if RIAA was correct, we really need to ask the question, is it ok to put random people in federal prisons just to ensure that the music people continue getting paid?I'm sure buggy whip manufacturers back in the day would have loved to see car makers in jail and we'd still be driving horse carriages.Back then common sense and deregulation seems to have won, nowadays not so much, as we're still driving petrol, not electric.

Another utter fallacy is the RIAA's implicit argument of conflating {all musicians} with {RIAA music}. Specifically, there is an enormous musical economy that never contributes to the RIAA's coffers (no doubt to their dismay). This includes things like giving music lessons, gigging at weddings, bar mitzvahs, and corporate events, etc. I can only speak to the classical side of things, but that is overall going to be a bigger source of income for the vast majority of classical musicians than the glamor work of recording for major labels or playing in the backup group for some big-label artist in a packed arena. And it's steady: some percentage of kids (and adults, for that matter) will need/want music lessons; people will keep getting married. In hard economic times there will be less cash available for these activities, but that has absolutely nothing to do with the RIAA and their specious statistics and chartjunk.

And, as mentioned in the article, you miss out on counting a lot of musicians specifically because it is so damnably hard to make a full-time living doing it. So they show up as teachers (of music, normally), or secretaries, or lawyers, or music store employees, or doctors, or scientists (just picking some examples from people I know who do gigging or give lessons). But they fail to show up as musicians in the official statistics.

I would argue that the prevalence of digital music recording, inexpensive software, and the Internet created a large source of amateur musicians who are willing to give their music away for little or nothing. If nothing else, they're musicians who are not willing to give up their day jobs and are therefore not "paid musicians". One only has to go as far as the Overclocked ReMix community (ocremix.org) or random artists on SoundCloud (soundcloud.com) to find examples of talented artists who are dying for exposure.

It seems to me that the only musicians that become successful (paid) are those that follow the RIAA's 'formula'. Lots of T&A. Similar beats and rhythms. Instrument setups within a set of configurations. And so on. Has anyone else noticed how much of today's music sounds like everyone else's?

And look at the sources cited; US Dept of Labor and the RIAA. I am pretty sure that there are musicians in other countries, and others who are not members of the RIAA.

Correct, and more important piracy is suppose to be a global phenomenon. So obviously while it's effect will not be to the same degree, country by country. It should be there, and also it could be refined further to, small time musicians vs big time, for piracy isn't going to affect the big time musicians as much as the small.

If the RIAA cared about musicians it wouldn't steal so much money from their record sales that they make virtually nothing unless they are very successful.

The way to support musicians is to go to concerts and buy from directly if possible (or via ethical labels like Magnatune). Any music from the big labels should be bought used if possible so that you're not funding these parasites who subvert the democratic process of countries across the world to constantly increase copyright terms and criminalise their potential customers. It's not worth pirating though - why give their music such publicity - it's better ignored.

What kind of rubbish is that, comparing individual months in two years, which are 12 years apart? Unless they're trying to show a seasonal change (which is ridiculous for musicians stating their main employment in the area), they're engaging in blatant lies-by-statistics.

I mean, I know it's the RIAA, but I thought their new schtick was trying to engage the community with some honesty and integrity.... nah I can't say that with a straight face

Great explanation, thank you for the article. A 41% decline in musicians seems a bit excessive in light of the fact that maybe they don't call themselves musicians anymore even if they still make music. Much as the computer programmer->systems engineer description has changed. In other words, musician to 'sound effects generator', or 'commercial advertisement sound generator' doesn't mean there are less musicians it just means their job title changed.

With today's reliance on prerecorded music tracks, and samples of previous hit songs (hip-hop seems to be the worst offender), and a general dislike of what the RIAA releases it is no real surprise if there are less musicians now than 10-15 years ago.

Additionally, with the many distribution methods available to the populace today, it may be that more music is being produced by people who just don't classify themselves as 'musicians'. In other words, it doesn't take a large studio to be able to record high-quality music anymore, so people who may have dabbled in playing an instrument and recording songs years ago as a hobby can now release that music without the help of the RIAA model and make money. But that doesn't mean those people will change their day-job.

Let's face it, it has never been easy as a musician to make money by making music and with the amount of music now available across all mediums (radio, internet, live events, etc.) is at a saturation point where it can be accessed by anyone, anywhere, at any time. And with many people such as myself who have a wide range of tastes in music, I listen to pretty much anything except country and most pop, and prefer music from the 70s, 80s, 90s, and 00s, to what is available today, there is really very little that I listen to released in the past 3-5 years.

For example, I just saw Adam Ant in concert last week and it was a great show. But I already own pretty much everything he's already released, have for years now, and none of it gets radio play anymore. Other artists I've seen over the past couple of years - GWAR, Fighting Jamesons (local Irish Punk), Flogging Molly, Misfits, Jello Biafra, Rude Zombie (local ska band), Dropkick Murphy's, Kid Rock, Pepper, 2 Skinnee J's, Tech Nine, Hed PE, NOFX, and many others - all great shows and none have really pushed out anything new in years.

In the last 10 years the RIAA has went from signing "bands" with multiple members to "artists" comprised of one hand-picked phony backed by session performers that are used in hundreds of applications. If anyone is at fault, it's the RIAA for not signing groups of performers that play live music, but by signing a bunch of single artists and using the same session performers to back them up. Since these artists generally have a single hit or two and then disappear, the performers assigned to play with them get moved on to the next project instead of being permanent members of one group.

I'm not sure how good an idea this use of statistical data is on the topic.Are the self reporting based on questions about ONLY being a paid musician?Are we discussing if a decline in artists === a questionnaire?

For me it is not a decline in cultural input to reduce the number of full time/primary paid musicians.Artists who contribute whilst doing other things to live are far from valuelessEinstein was a patent clerk Van Gough did not survive on his popularity from paintingMany open source developers contribute amazing advances whilst working else where

What the head of the RIAA has is a concern about people paid from a business model that fits his members, personally I couldn't care less about that as long as more people get to be involved and great talents are available/shared...

Looking at other non-related job titles during those same periods ought to shine some more light on this.

Another very interesting number would be to know how much the average musician got from the RIAA back then versus today. Are the musicians quitting because the RIAA payout is dramatically less? The RIAA always pays themselves first. In a shrinking pie I suspect the percentage being paid out to the musicians is quickly falling each year as the RIAA tries to keep their own profits from declining. It's the old game where the band gets paid out of the profits and of course there are never any profits since the RIAA is keeping the books.

Todays music is completely different than the music most of us have grown up on. We grew up with real bands and real musicians, today all we get is label created music with studio musicians playing as a backup band to some make believe singer found on scripted TV shows or someone singing someone elses songs on Youtube. This all started in the mid 80's with the boy bands, none of which played an instrument or wrote their own music, and the concept that the singer is the band. Real musicians don't want to get screwed by the music studios anymore and have gone independent, so they can actually write and own their own music.

If you think all there is today is label-created boy bands, and you think this is a new phenomenon, you're not paying attention. Boy bands have existed as long as television. The big difference is that radio and tv stations are sitting in fewer hands than any time since the 50s, with fewer humans getting to make independent programming decisions.

But music-wise, we are in a golden age. There are more bands, making more music than ever before, in every style imaginable. And a huge amount of it is wonderful. Technology has made starting a band easier, and has brought recording and self-publishing music within reach of anyone who wants to give it a go. If you're playing the "there's no good music today" card, you are simply lazy and don't care enough to look. Stop yelling at those darn kids to get off your lawn long enough to search your local music listings or find a music blog that matches your taste.

These new artists often aren't doing it as their only job though, and I'd be completely unsurprised to learn that there are many fewer label-employed session musicians than there were ten years ago.

Unrelated to the above musings, this article should have also looked at the population increase over the studied period. The RIAA comparison of cherry-picking the highest 1999 month and lowest 2011 month is indefensible, but the article's 8.4% figure underestimates the actual decline by failing to take into account population growth.

What some people don't visualize is that for every recording artist (and add to their ranks the producers, studio musicians and recording engineers behind them) for every one of them, there's probably six or seven musicians who make their living just gigging - from rockers in cover bands and tribute bands to jazz cats playing lounges and country clubs to classical musicians playing in the orchestra pit. You can add to their numbers the music teachers as well.

So for the vast majority of musicians out there, illegal mp3 downloads don't affect them one bit. That being said, for those who do dream of and do become recording artists, illegal downloads have changed their opportunities quite a bit. It used to be a band of say, mid-level popularity, could dream of making some money on the album / CD and some money on the tour as well. Now, for all except for a relatively small number of household names, making money on the recording is out and the only way to make a living is touring. Basically, the recordings are being made to get people interested in checking your act out live.

In other words, just think (if you're old enough to know) Steely Dan. A band like Becker and Fagan's Steely Dan, who existed almost solely to make great albums and rarely went out on tour is not even an option today. Yes, they were kind of anomaly, but regardless, especially for those bands that are a little less than superstar status, making a living recording is pretty much out these days.

Todays music is completely different than the music most of us have grown up on. We grew up with real bands and real musicians, today all we get is label created music with studio musicians playing as a backup band to some make believe singer found on scripted TV shows or someone singing someone elses songs on Youtube. This all started in the mid 80's with the boy bands, none of which played an instrument or wrote their own music, and the concept that the singer is the band. Real musicians don't want to get screwed by the music studios anymore and have gone independent, so they can actually write and own their own music.

Apart from the fact that you're completely wrong on your history, I find the idea that boy-bands are somehow less 'real' musicians than 'organic' bands to be bizarre. They are people who make music that other people like (because if they don't, they fail.) Even if I don't like their music, it seems to me they fit the definition of 'real' musician fine.

And it's not like they just sprung from the face of the Earth, fully formed. Just because it came from an audition instead of mates in a garage, it's somehow different?

Another way to look at it.Today we have formulaic pop music cranked out by those "reality shows" and how long do those singers etc last? Not very long before they fade away and is replaced. As they fade away = "job loss"

I know how long they last: 3 albums. That's the typical "1st contract" deal a new artist gets.

If you're a hot property, like an American Idol winner, you'll get the full marketing treatment for your first album. That's tons of airplay, tour support, top producers, etc. Of course, you'll put out a few covers of old hits so that Don Henley can pay his electric bill, but that's OK, you're getting your name out there.

Album #2 you get some more credits (which translate to money) but you have to pay back the promotion of the first album, which you are going to be competing with since they rushed you back into the studio after your tour so they could "strike while the iron is still hot." Oh, but your producer thinks your voice would be perfect for this other 1970s cover that just happens to be by a good friend of his (but he'll come in and play on the track! What an honor!). Meanwhile, let's hope you saved up that prize money or your manager got you in a commercial or something so you can eat something other than rammin noodles, because you still haven't seen any royalty checks and they forgot to mention that the tour rider comes out of your paycheck.

Back into the studio for album #3. This time you get to work with a "bright new star" producer, who knows nothing about music, but that's OK because he's related to Russel Simmons. You get less tour support, but that's OK too, since you have quite a following from your first 2 albums. You finally start to see a few dollars from your first album, but don't dare do the math or you find out you've been working for much less than minimum wage. Where'd all the money go? Well, remember those covers? Remember the tour support? Well, hold on to those memories because you won't see any of that this time. In fact, you better hope you got enough of a fan base for word of mouth to take hold because the radio guys are already pushing this season's winner of American Idol. Your manager better get you on Celebrity Apprentice before it's too late.

When it comes time to renegotiate your contract, you'd better have something other than a few albums under your belt, because your last album didn't meet expectations (oh, don't try to argue that they didn't promote it, you should be strong enough to stand on your own by now), but OK, they'll sign you to another 2 album deal with an option for a third. If they think it's good, they'll promote it, but there's a lot of other great acts that need a little more support, so don't expect it. But if you're good enough and have enough of a following you'll do just fine... now you'll have to go because there's someone in the lobby who looks, acts, and sounds just like you that they're in talks with...

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Basically I'm just trying to say that "music sales are falling" isn't down to a single source. Is MP3 downloads one factor - sure, but it's just that...a single factor among many others such as the wider diversity = higher music output, but from a wider source, including those outside RIAA's merits such as indies and so on into a more fussy market.

I would also argue there's a saturation point for music, and it goes down with age. I'm fairly tired of going to any retail store or restaurant anymore just because of the music blasting away. How people live with their iPods on shuffle all day is beyond my comprehension. I think back to when I was a kid with a cassette walkman, and how much I listened to the same few albums over and over. Now I have hundreds of hours of music on my phone and most of what I listen to is podcasts and books on tape. But even more so these days is just silence, especially after shopping or eating out.